Em,

What that means to me is that I will not be called names, be belittled by my behavior or criticized anymore. Be made to feel like less of a person because of whatever reason.

Judgement: says: You a despicable for stealing my car.

Non-judgement says: Stealing a car is a crime.

The difference between the two is this: The latter simply states fact, the former attempts to instill guilt on the perpetrator while stating the said fact.

Hope this helps,
Wolf

HE pretty much said it. Non-judgment to me also means not putting labels on who or what I am or do. NOT assuming you know why I did something or what was going through my head. It's okay to guess or wonder why someone did something. But don't ever completely assume.

Judgement implies 1-up position. I am better than you because I am not a sex addict. It says that justice or punishment is required from the person. It says you owe me.

In Psalms 51 David says that his sin ( adultry and murder ) was against God and God alone. To be unfaithful means empty of faith, empty of trusting God to meet our needs. My addict tells me that Gods gift in the form of my wife is not enough to meet my desperate loneliness, so I take matters out of gods hands into my own and act out.

Though this act feels so deeply like A sin against my wife, it is actually a sin of unfaithfulness against God. It is not fulfilling a debt of fidelity to my wife, but the words sin and debt in the bible are destinctly different in Greek and hebrew, though translated as sin in most English versions.

So is judgement appropriate for a debt? No repayment ( with interest) is appropriate, or forgiveness in the case where the debt can never be repaid. Judgement is appropriate for sin against God.

Being non-judgemental is to stop believing you are god and better than your SA and being humble in authentically needing to be repaid for the debt you are owed knowing it can never be done, but sad for them that they were separated from God through judgement.

So staying married to your Sa without being judgmental is actually a gift of deep love, and forgiveness of a debt of fidelity you can not be repaid, and a compassion for your Sa to be reconciled with god for their sin against him and him alone.

This is a deep and painful process. Usually involving making your unfaithful mistakes putting you in a position to be judged by God and owe your husband, like calling him names. All sin against God is the same and is always trusting ourselves over him. The consequences are different but we are all the same separated from God.

I'm not so sure anything that I said to my h is judgment "on" him. His behavior speaks for itself. He has the right to do and live anyway he wants to by his own judgment. And I must live my own life with my own judgment. The only judgment call I can make is about what I feel and what is good for me and what is not. I think that what I said at the onset is more what I would feel about myself were I to behave that way. There wasn't a single word I said that I wouldn't have felt about myself had I been the one with that behavior.

However, in hindsight...I think that for me it would have been better to have said nothing at all...and let him explain and support his own behavior.

I also hope you beautiful lovers of such broken men understand that the pain is not lessened by the fact that this iniquity is between me and God.

I can not imagine how you feel by being betrayed sexually by the one who you gave your heart to, but if it feels anything like the desperate loneliness I feel right now that has always been there begging to be stopped at all costs, I so very sorry. I am so sad that you suffer this pain at my hands, and I wish I could take it back. The anger you use to hide the flow of tears scares me and makes me fear you will abandon me like my parents did when i so despirately needed them.

But your anger is a gift. In the weakness of our pain, It is strength, it is energy, and it is power. Power to be safe enough to heal. To find forgiveness to turn despirately to God and say "I need you".

And he shows up.

"my grace is sufficient for you, my strengthnisnperfected in your weakness" therefore I most gladly boast in my infirmity, that the power of Christ rests upon me.

Therefore i take pleasure in infirmity, in needs, in reproach, in persecution, in distress, for when i am weak, then i am strong.

Judgement in this world we can see is power. But in the spirit world we can not see, being stripped of your clothes, all your dignity, beaten and tortured then hung on a cross for the single reason to create forgiveness that could never be possible before is power. All forgiveness flows from the Cross. So to give up the power of the right to judge and punish in this world and take on what seems weak in forgiveness is strength. Which takes more strength in the most heated moment of anger? To yell "you are a pathetic cheater" or to touch him on the face and say, "you hurt me deeply and I am working on forgiving you."


Thank you all so much for letting me show you my heart.

Choose: i'm sorry that you feel pain too. I would wish it on no one. I don't wish it on my H either. I never really did. In fact, I lived my life, my wifedom, in such a way that I hoped to prevent any of that pain ever touching him...from ever degrading him...for ever reducing him...as it had me already. I already knew what it does...how it feels...what it kills. He'll never be the reciever of that particular pain...not from me anyway. I refuse to return it...only absorb it. Let It cost me what it cost me. The cost of trust.

The Bible says, if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. And, I've seen what hurts me, what ruins my serenity, and seek to pluck it out. How to pluck out the raging pain of betrayal and leave a marriage intact, I don't know. I don't even know that it's possible, though I'll allow for that minute possibility. I think it's more like living without a member of my body...limping along...but living the best I can with what is left of it. The only thing I know to do is continue to live my life by certain principles. Not mine as you know. I know no way of ever undoing something that has already been done. I hear so much about pain...how one must deal with the pain. I only know one way to do that...endure it.

Endure pain that stays is so terribly hopeless! Maybe the pain stops after the death is grieved and a new more beautiful marriage is born.

Jesus was the only human being that deserved not to die. So why are you holding out for the marriage you deserved to have which is dead. Why not forgive, and let it go. Then and only then can it be redirected.

Choose: I think somehow you think that forgiveness is a magic wand of sorts. Well, in ways perhaps it is. It lets the thing be as it is without regard to my feelings. I don't see why you think it does anything else but that. Maybe you understand that in some way that I don't. I f so, you're fortunate. Because I truly have no desire to be hurt...or injured...or crippled. I didn't choose to be...I didn't want to find that trust is not a good thing and that if I indulge in that I get hurt. But, that did happen. And so truly, the only one I can blame for that is me. I offered trust...and I got hurt for that...so I'm responsible. I shouldn't have offered it to begin with. I assume that responsibility as I'm the one who was trusting.

You talk about forgiveness...and yet you also say that you hold a grudge...over little things...and justify yourself to do even more damage than already occured. You use your hurt...whatever that is... and your grudge to act out and do more damage wtih the same exact behavior? You think that it is unjust that you don't have things just as you think they should be, so it's ok to do as you do? The same thing? A viable reason to continue?

Whether or not I forgive by some standard of yours, I don't use even this as an excuse to betray. So, if you can't forgive little things, and use those as a valid cause for betrayal, how can you suggest that am not doing something to your standard...one that you don't even live yourself? I got hurt for trusting...I live with it. My mistake...my problem.

And...even if I could forgive like you suggest...what I'm not even sure...if such thing as memory loss occured...does that somehow remove what has already been done? If so, then I don't see it....and I don't see how it repairs anything at all. Other than for him maybe. He doesn't have to pay the usual penalty for his behavior, though he was always willing to do that...until it came time to do it.

Maybe that's just a horrible part of me...that I can't forget. And I don't trust because I don't forget. However, I wish it were true and I could both forget and trust. However, as long as I have memory, it will always hurt....and sans some mental dysfunction...I will always remember. So, though I take no revenge, or don't use his betrayal as a reason to betray him in return...or just feel not empathy at all when he says he wants me here...the damage remains as it is...mine to live with.

You say you wish you could take it back. I know my h does too. And so do I. But, the fact is...it can't be taken back...it has to be lived with.

At church yesterday a lady spoke regarding her children...that she cautioned them about viewing certain things...that once viewed...cannot be unviewed. Her daughter ignored that warning and did it anyway. Then cam hurting to her mother...I can't get it out of my mind. And her mother reminded her again...just don't view those things...they have an impact...in that you can't forget. And, it resonated truth to me as well...because what I have seen...can never be forgotten...no matter how much I wish I'd never seen it.

Ok you were betrayed. You deserve justice.

Choose,

I am really scared. I have noticed that you are sounding too much like me. As I started to read this thread my first thought was "1-up" position. Then I read your first line on post #3.

My wife has noticed that as well. With the exception of the scripture quoting, she can't tell our posts apart.

Great minds think alike :)

Anyway, I agree with choose. Also, being judgmental comes when we think in terms of good and bad. In the case of recovery, people are either functional or dysfunctional.

Once we start seeing the addiction for what it is- an attempt to escape the pain of intolerable reality, then our judgements towards others softens and we can feel compassion.

Anyway, nothing more to add.

Soberone

You I already said it all for you.

SoberTWOkinobi.

I think Choose and Sober said it best. I will just add that right after I found out about my H's PA, I was devastated. The biggest hurt for me was that I had been loving him with everything I have and he had not done the same, and that he had not trusted and loved me enough to show me all of him, just the parts he wanted me to see. I know why that is, but it still hurt. Shortly after disclosure, I was talking to him and told him that i stll knew he was a good person. He has said that has helped a lot, that throughout all this, I was angry about his actions, but I could still express that I saw that good person I knew was there.

I asked my H to leave when I found out about the PA. He was gone for 6 months. When he left, i had a 3 month old, who was born early, so he was still small and up ALL the time, and an 18 month old at home. I got up numerous times, every night and took care of the two kids by myself for a long time. My h would visit, but they were my responsibilty. I can remember getting up one night, just exhausted and thinking to myself 'he owes me. I get to sleep in until our kids are teenagers if he comes back. he gets to get up in the middle of the night for a long time!' The next day i told him what I had thought, and expressed that I knew I had to let go of that. his response was 'I do not think you have to. I do desrve to get up with them.' I told him that he would think that at first, but after awhile, he would grow the resent me. To know that he was in recovery, yet I was still holding the PA 'against him,' and that it would destroy our marriage as easily as the PA could. That is not necessarily 'judgemet' but I feel it is a similiar avenue..

Choose: You fail to understand me. There is no justice. There can be no justice in this siutation...if there ever can be in any situation. There is nothing I can do about what happened. It isn't just...but it happened. My Hs experience in life led him to do something that hurt me. Hurt our marriage. Had he "really" known what he was doing...what would happen...he wouldn't have done it. And he wishes he hadn't. I do understand that....and because of that understanding I am willing to let the marriage stand as it is. But, that doesn't mean that the hurt didn't do what hurt does. And, he understands that too. That I can no more be "not hurt" than he could have known the ultimate result. And he is willing to let the marriage stand as it is too.

You said, " it can never be done." And I know that. There is no way of ever having justice in this situation. I think that the commandments are geared on things that are hurtful to others? Seems that way? Do not kill....do not steal...do not bear false witness...etc. Because when we do those things, we hurt others, and consequently ourselves too? Hence Christ said, love your neighbor as yourself. Maybe an SA doesn't love themselves, so the treatment of others is a reflection of that. I dunno. I'm not God...He knows all things. I only know what I feel. And, I'm not going to lie about that. Maybe what I feel is wrong...probably is...but it is still what I feel.

My H did change his path...and he doesn't do those hurtful things anymore. So the damage that is done...is done...and there will be no more. And that...is all I can expect. Justice? No...not ever. Because no matter what I did, or do, it could never be achieved...because it would still hurt anyway. So, no....I don't seek justice...because there is none.

Do you think forgiveness is just? Or is justice only possible when punitive damages have been paid?

Thanks all for replies here...as we continue our sessions in couples therapy, this board is helping me articulate some of the half-formed thoughts bouncing around in my heart and head. Looking back over our relationship (17 years married next month), I feel I have been approaching my marriage and h's SA from a non-judgemental stance most of the time...but almost to a fault...sliding too far into not holding him accountable for anything or showing anger. So I'm looking for the healthy fine line of expressing anger, communicating my boundaries, but doing so in a non-judgemental way that lets him know I give a rip and love him. Getting better at this I think in the middle of messy stuff...